GOD only knows how a Beach Boys-inspired team of adventures returned home in one piece after travelling thousands of miles in an old banger towing a surfboard.

Four friends only felt good vibrations from their 18-year-old Chrysler PT Cruiser – affectionately nicknamed Black Beauty – which took them through nine countries in just four days.

Philanthropist David Rivers, from Sadberge, near Darlington, took in mountain passes and a lap of the Nürburgring as part of the trip alongside his crew competing in the fundraising Wacky Races-style, Two Ball Banger Rally.

Mr Rivers, Stuart Hodgson, Graeme Riley and Peter Dawson, were given a maximum £567 budget for their car to race across Europe in aid of the Chernobyl Children’s Lifeline charity to help youngsters from Belarus and Ukraine affected by the fallout of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

Mr Rivers said: “We got a trophy at the start of it all for our car being a Mechanical Marvel – which is awarded to the car that people think is least likely to finish the rally.

“But she got us through thousands of miles and helped to tow me up the Stelvio Pass in Italy on a surfboard while I was wearing the kilt I got married in.

“It’s very surreal as out of all the billions of people in the world, there isn’t going to be anyone else who can say they’ve done that.

“People were cheering and clapping at the side of the road – I’m sure they’d never seen anything like it.”

The team were also joined by a fifth member – a mannequin named Mike Love in honour of the co-founding member of the Beach Boys – who was secured to the roof of the PT Cruiser, complete with shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and a straw hat.

Mr Rivers added: “Mark went on his own little adventure at one point after the other competitors got hold of him for a while.

“It was great atmosphere when we arrived in the car, with surfboards and Mark Love on the top, blasting out the Beach Boys in a square in France.”

The team expect to have raised around £3,000 for the charity close to Mr Rivers’ heart following the event last week.

Alongside his wife, Gillian, the couple host children who have been orphaned or living with radiation-related health problems after growing up in areas contaminated by the 1986 catastrophe.

Mr Rivers said: “The reward is immediate – by spending a month here the children lose 85 per cent of their contamination.

“If anyone has been at all entertained by what we did then it would be great if they could donate to our fundraising efforts and we plan on coming back for next year’s rally in a vehicle no one would ever think of.”